ERA OF THE; TERTIARY FORMATION. 



69 



first time, oxen, deer, camels, and other specimens of the 

 ruminantia. 



Such is an outline of the fauna of the tertiary era, as 

 ascertained by the illustrious naturalists who first devoted 

 their attention to it. It will be observed, that it brings us 

 up to the felinae, or carnivora, a considerably elevated 

 point in the animal scale, but still leaving a blank for the 

 quadrumana (monkeys) and for man, who collectively 

 form, as will be afterwards seen, the first group in that 

 scale. It sometimes happens, however as we have seen, 

 that a few rare traces of a particular class of animals are 

 in time found in formations originally thought to be desti- 

 tute of them, displaying as it were a dawn of that depart- 

 ment of creation. Such seems to be the case with at least 

 the quadrumana. A jaw-bone and tooth of an animal of 

 this order, and belonging to the genus macacus, were found 

 in the London clay (eocene,) at Kyson, near Woodbridge, 

 in 1839. Another jaw-bone, containing several teeth, 

 supposed to have belonged to a species of monkey about 

 three feet high, was discovered about the same time in a 

 stratum of marl, surmounted by compact limestone, in tha 

 department of Gers, at the foot of the Pyrenees. Asso- 

 ciated with this last were remains of not less than thirty 

 mammiferous quadrupeds, including three species of rhi- 

 noceros, a large anoplotherium, three species of deer, two 

 antelopes, a true dog, a large cat, an animal like a weazel, 

 a small hare, and a huge species of the edentata. Both of 

 these places are considerably to the north of any region 

 now inhabited by the monkey tribes. Fossil remains of 

 quadrumana have been found in at least two other parts 

 of the earth — namely, the sub-Himalayan hills, near the 

 Sutlej, and in Brazil (both in the tertiary strata;) the ft/st 

 being a large species of semnopithecus, and the second, a 

 still larger animal belonging to the American group of 

 monkeys, but a new genus, and denominated by its dis- 

 coverer, Dr. Lund, protopithecus. The latter would be 

 four feet in height. 



One remarkable circumstance connected wkrft the ter- 

 tiary formation remains to be noticed — namely, the pre- 

 valence of volcanic action at that era. In Auvergne, in 

 Catalonia, near Venice, and in the vicinity of Rome and 

 Naples, lavas exactly resembling the produce of existing 

 volcanoes, are associated and intermixed with the lacus- 

 trine as well as marine tertiaries. The superficies of ter- 



